Supercoach - live scores, statistics, news, blogs and podcasts

What is Supercoach?

Supercoach is the official fantasy football competition of News Limited newspapers. It is a competition played between people like you, just for fun. The game allows you to try your hand at making the decisions of a real life Aussie Rules football coach, and compete with your friends, family or workmates at the same time.

In short, the idea is to select a group of real players from the Australian Football League (AFL) to "play" for your fictional team, and then for the real-life statistics of those players to determine which team in your fantasy league wins your competition over the course of a real AFL season. The overall objective of the game is to see who amongst your fellow fantasy competitors would be the best "coach" if their fantasy of being a coach of a real pro sports team came true.

Fantasy football is similar to something that AFL fans are very familiar with: the tipping competition. In a tipping competition, each participant picks a team in every game each week of a real AFL season that they think is going to win. In fantasy football, each "coach" picks players every week who they think are going to play well that week.

The performance of real sportspeople in their professional league is given a certain amount of points for each real life game according to a certain system. Participants in these games compete with each other to see who can get the highest score each week, and for the whole season, with prizes awarded to the best teams.

In addition, Supercoach includes leagues where a Supercoach squad "wins" each week if the sum total of the fantasy points that the chosen players on their team scored on the real pitches and fields in that week's real games is more than the sum of his or her opponents' team. Thus, each week of the AFL corresponds to a week of the Supercoach leagues and, through a ladder and finals system, you can feel just like you are coaching your fantasy team to ultimate victory just like a real life professional coach.

How can I get the jump on my league, and the rest of the Supercoach competition?

Here at FanFooty we have assembled the best knowledge and the most important data about Supercoach. This site should be your #1 resource for Supercoach research. We have a huge amount of pages devoted to Supercoach to enable you to enjoy the competition with the full fantasy football experience.

Plan your Supercoach squad: FanFooty's most popular page in the pre-season is the Fanplanner, where you can build your Supercoach for the upcoming season using projected prices and positions for every currently-listed player in the AFL, using historical data and including Guru projections for round 1 of the new season. Every serious fantasy football coach does their preparation, and there isn't a better tool for laying the groundwork for the success of your next Supercoach than the Fanplanner.

Supercoach research: FanFooty has fantasy scoring records for each game in the AFL dating back to 1993, and Supercoach records back to 2005, which are all accessible through the player profiles. You can do a AFL player search on anyone in the league, past or present, who played in that time. These fantasy scores can be viewed by year or by team. There are other pages that help you figure out who's hot and who's not in fantasy footy, like the Supercoach Breakdown page lists the Supercoach averages of each type of player under the Champion Data player classification system against each AFL team, which you can then drill down to look at player by player, including a list of who is comping up for each team in that position.

Live scoring: Visit FanFooty on AFL match days and you will see links to live scoring pages including Supercoach scores at the end of each quarter. In addition, there are live news updates on which players are injured, reported, running hot, gone cold, taken a knock, shown some heart, or anything else that happens on the field during the game. Live scoring pages also have a rollicking chat section where you can joke around with fellow fantasy coaches who are also watching the live scores trickle through, and barrack for your favourite players.

Guru score predictions: FanFooty now publishes a set of projected Supercoach scores each week based on historical data. The projections are a combination of recent scores by each player in their last three games, against the opponent, at the ground and at the time of day, with modifications made for health plus a Guru "push" for other factors, and it is all normalised to produce a team score similar to recent team scores against the player's upcoming opponent. The Guru projections are listed for Backs, Midfielders, Rucks and Forwards every week, and updated during the week as injury and other news changes the facts.

Exteam: The most powerful tool FanFooty has is our Exteam feature, where you can enter in your team from an external fantasy competition, including Supercoach, to gain access to advanced functions. The biggest part of Exteam is the live scoring pages, not only for your team on its own but live head-to-head scores with your league opponents, in a quicker and more reliable way than the official site. You can also see how your team and your opponents stack up with the Guru projections.

Regular blog posts: The Supercoach category on the FanFooty blog is well worth watching during the week in football season, with regular fantasy-specific articles giving you information and statistical analysis that you won't get anywhere else. In particular, each week you'll see articles on the previous round (Talking Points), rookies to pick up (Boys on the Bubble), who is at the top or bottom of their price fluctuations (Rollercoaster), as well as weekly teamsheets and Friday teams when they appear.

Weekly podcasts: For those of you who like to get your fantasy football fix on the go, download the weekly podcasts from the Coaches Box every week. This is the only Supercoach audio podcast in the world, where for an hour or two your hosts m0nty and Molly review the week just gone, chew over the Boys on the Bubble, talk a bit of general football and look for next week's Supercoach captains. Some weeks, there are special guests who are experienced and successful fantasy coaches from the elite leagues of the competition. The Coaches Box is recorded live on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday nights on Talkshoe - which has live chat while you listen - and released the following morning.

Fantasy forums: FanFooty has launched its new forums, which include a Supercoach board among many others. This will no doubt be an invaluable resource during the football season when the discussion will be all Supercoach, all the time!